‘Weather-weather lang’

Banknotes are small, almost worthless, pieces of paper, but depending on the amount printed on them, one piece of paper is worth more than another with a different color and a different portrait on it. Those who cannot read the words and numbers on banknotes rely on color or the faces to know their value.

Perhaps the portraits on banknotes gave rise to the saying “mukhang pera,” which literally means “looks like money” or can refer to a materialistic person. Faces on banknotes provide traffic policemen and enforcers with an indirect way of asking for a bribe. When flagged down and asked, “Sinong abogado mo (Who is your lawyer)?” motorists offer a bribe by stating a name on a bank-

note. Quezon (P20) and Osmeña (P50) used to be popular “lawyers” a generation ago, but inflation and rising prices mean that Quezon, Osmeña and Roxas (P100) given singly are not helpful anymore. These days Macapagal (P200) is enough for merienda money, Ninoy (P500) seems to be the usual “lawyer,” but the trio of Escoda, Lim and Abad Santos (P1,000) will definitely get you off the hook for any traffic offense, real or imagined, any violation short of causing death or destruction worth more than P1,000.

It seems like ancient history now, but when the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) issued the yellow People Power P500 bill in 1987 with Ninoy Aquino, it began a trend for commemorative notes circulating and used rather than kept for collection. In 1998 two banknotes commemorating the centennial of Philippine Independence were issued by the BSP. First, there was a limited issue, collector’s item, listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest legal tender

banknote in the world. Slightly larger than a sheet of short bond paper, roughly 8 x 15 inches, only 1,000 pieces of these P100,000 notes were issued by BSP. The other was a P2,000 bill with the image of Joseph Estrada taking his oath of office as president at historic Barasoain Church. If Erap’s team did due diligence and knew their history, they would have known that Emilio Aguinaldo, who took his oath there, did not complete his term. Erap paid the price for repeating history: he did not complete his term, too.

You can be sure no future Philippine president-elect will ever tempt fate by taking the oath in Malolos. It is not just Aguinaldo and Erap who met bad luck in Barasoain. Remember, Erap’s bosom friend, Fernando Poe Jr., is shown on the P2,000 bill too. FPJ ran in the 2004 presidential elections and lost to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Had he won and taken his oath in Barasoain at the end of June 2004, he would not have completed his term either as he died of a stroke in December 2004. The BSP issued 300,000 pieces of these inauspicious P2,000 Erap notes, only to withdraw them from circulation when Erap was deposed in 2001.

In 2002 BSP introduced a new denomination—P200—which was predominantly green and bore the portrait of Diosdado Macapagal. When the notes were issued some asked: Why Macapagal? Why not Laurel, Garcia, Quirino, Magsaysay, or Marcos? Obviously Macapagal was chosen because his daughter, Gloria, happened to be the vice president who succeeded Erap as President after he was deposed in 2001.

A banknote may be small but it is contested territory. Some people were unhappy with the reverse of the P200 bill showing GMA taking her oath outside the Edsa Shrine amidst People Power II. Invoking a technicality they asked, shouldn’t one be dead to appear on money? Even Ferdinand Marcos declined to have his face on a banknote, but his profile graced the P5 coin.

It is ironic that the justification for GMA appearing on the reverse of the P200 note was the precedent set by the notes with Erap on the P2,000 bill. Thus, the Macapagal father-and-daughter P200 bill was circulated while the Erap P2,000 bill remained in a BSP vault.

Erap ran again but lost to Noynoy Aquino in the 2010 elections. If Erap had been vindicated by the people and elected to a second term as president, would the P2,000 bill have been taken out of long storage and circulated by the BSP? Would the BSP have discreetly pulled out the P200 Macapagal notes? All this is water under the bridge now because the Erap notes in storage, except for a small number for numismatic, historical, and collecting purposes, were permanently withdrawn from circulation late last year.

How do you solve the issue of GMA on the back of the P200 Macapagal banknote? There are rules about faces on the front of banknotes, preventing change for a number of years from issue. However, the reverse of banknotes can be redesigned, thus GMA taking her oath on the bills issued in 2002 has been replaced in the new currency issued in December 2010. Hardly six months since she stepped down from Malacañang, GMA celebrated on the reverse of the P200 note was replaced by a tarsier! One can only wonder if this was deliberate since she could have been replaced by a maliputo or a butanding, a cat or a parrot, perhaps even a pearl. But a tarsier? This would never have happened if she were still president, but GMA should remember how her father fared socially when he was out of power.

Erap was right when he described his life and experience as “weather-weather lang.” Now detained in a hospital room, GMA can only sigh under her braces, “Sic transit gloria mundi.”

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